Her heart dropped into her stomach. Heath had definitely not told herthat.
Chapter 19
Having come to find out why Lily had insisted on speaking to Giselle privately, Heathbrook heard Lily’s words just as he burst through the door. “What the hell are you talking about?” He marched up to the young woman. “Why would you even speak such a lie to my fiancée?”
A quick glance at Giselle and her shattered expression showed him only too plainly just how unconscionably cruel Lily’s words had been. “She’s lying, sweeting.”
“It’s the truth!” Lily jumped up to face him, looking perplexed. “I thought you knew.”
He jerked his attention back to the damned female he’d once foolishly fancied himself to be in love with. “That Zack is myson? No, I damned well didn’t know! You have to be making that up!”
“I’m not, I swear. Your mother said she told you.” Lily paused. “Well, she said she was going to tell you, at any rate. I-I assumed she had. Ever since your return, I’ve been terrified you’d say something about it to my husband. Samuel doesn’t know about us at all, and I don’t want him to know. I was just about to discuss that with Miss Bernard.”
He turned to Giselle in a panic. Now she was gazing at him withan unreadable expression. That could not bode well. “Ma chérie, I swear to you this is the first I’m hearing of this.”
“I can tell,” she said. “I have never seen you look so shocked. Besides, you told me once that as far as you knew you had never sired a child, and I think you would have had trouble speakingthatmonumental a lie.”
“Damned right.” His stomach churning, he turned back to Lily. “You’re going to have to explain this. I mean, I know that you and I … But it was only once. And how did my mother get involved with any of it later?”
Lily dropped back into her chair. “I … I came to her when I missed my courses the third time.”
“Why didn’t you write and tell me?”
“I didn’t know what it meant until I told Mama about it. Then, she insisted on going to your mother, and they hatched a plan to protect my reputation. I mean, you were gone, and they weren’t sure how long it would take to get you back from France. I would almost certainly have been showing by then. Besides which, your mother really felt you were too young to marry.”
“As did my father and your parents, apparently,” he growled.
She conceded that with a sheepish look. “So, they decided that your mother would announce to everyone that she was with child by your father and say that she was going east to stay with her cousin for her lying-in, since your father wasn’t here. Because my family was so close to yours, she said she was going to take me with her as a companion … to … to help me learn some polish, so I could find a good husband in society.”
“And peoplebelievedthat nonsense?” he said incredulously.
Lily shrugged. “My parents and yours had been fairly good at hushing up the elopement, so no one had any inkling that you and I knew each other … er …”
“Intimately?” Giselle suggested.
He glared at her, then turned back to Lily. “Go on.”
“The two of us traveled to Broadstairs—”
“Broadstairs!What cousin was she staying with in …” It hit him all at once, and he groaned. “So, that’s why Yates has been fighting so hard for custody. He knows about all the skeletons I didn’t even realize were in my closet.”
“I suppose he does,” Lily said. “But he’s a very nice man. A bit odd perhaps, but he didn’t seem to mind helping with our mothers’ arrangement. And it couldn’t have been easy for him having me and your mother thrust upon him out of the blue like that.”
“You and Mother stayed with him for five months?” he said, still finding the whole story incredible.
“Yes.”
“And you wrote me that letter about Samuel Pritchard while you were there.”
She colored. “Yes.”
“Was it true?” Not that he cared anymore, but it had always pricked his pride that she’d married so quickly after he’d gone. “That you were in love with him?”
“Not really. But I liked him well enough. And if I hadn’t married quickly after Zachary was born and the truth had come out later somehow, there was always a chance I would never get to marry anybody. Plus, I knew Samuel would take good care of me and never stray like some men do.” When he scowled at her, she added, “You did have a reputation, you know.”
“I was sixteen when I got that reputation! And I had promised to marry you and be faithful. You could at least have waited for me.”
“For eleven and a half years?”